Birth in the Time of Coronavirus, Day 1
M and I were in the hospital for six days and five nights in January when Birdie arrived. Pretty much nothing about that experience went the way that we wanted, except for the conclusion where we brought a healthy baby home.
Due to M's age, the ob/gyn informed us that she recommended that we serve Birdie an eviction notice (aka, induce labor) in the 39th week. Around the 35 week mark Birdie was in breach position, which would have required a c-section. That's not uncommon, and sure enough by week 37 she was in the preferred heads down position and everything looked good to go. Then at the end of week 38 at the last ultrasound, Birdie had moved around some more and ended up in the transverse breach position. As such, when we went to the hospital on the Monday of week 39 M was actually on the schedule for c-section in early afternoon. Naturally, at the "just in case" ultrasound before surgery, Birdie was back in heads down position and so natural birth was back on the table.
Monday afternoon and evening was therefore devoted to manual methods of inducement, namely a balloon catheter. This was extremely uncomfortable for M, and worse, didn't actually seem to do anything useful with regards to hastening our daughter's arrival. It did cause M some pretty substantial pain. After most of a day of this the the ob/gyn on duty evaluated her that evening and said "ok, it's clear that this kid isn't going to come the natural way, you should get some sleep and we'll do a c-section Tuesday morning." In line with those plans, all the manual inducement efforts were halted and we went to bed. That concluded our first day in the birthing suite.
As I mentioned in the corresponding You Are What You Eat post, due to the pandemic, the entire birthing unit was locked down. We were not allowed to leave the room for any reason. At that point the hospital staff was just starting to get vaccinated, so we had on masks basically the entire time. It was extremely boring for both of us, although obviously worse for M since she had to deal with pain and discomfort in addition to the boredom.
The birthing suite itself wasn't too bad. At the time I joked that it was the most expensive hotel I'd ever stayed in, which alas did not correspond with it being the nicest. There was one very large room with M's hospital bed next to various monitoring equipment. There was a large sofa bed, an armchair, and a recliner on wheels that could be moved around. A pretty sizable TV was mounted over the sofa bed. A small hallway was partitioned off by a curtain, which hid a sink and the doorway to a very small utilitarian bathroom, which included a shower. There some south-facing windows which looked down on a courtyard of some kind, and mostly showed us gray clouds the entire time we were there. The wifi was pretty strong. There are worse places to be confined, but it appears that I am temperamentally not suited to being locked up, and clearly should avoid prison for that reason alone.
Due to M's age, the ob/gyn informed us that she recommended that we serve Birdie an eviction notice (aka, induce labor) in the 39th week. Around the 35 week mark Birdie was in breach position, which would have required a c-section. That's not uncommon, and sure enough by week 37 she was in the preferred heads down position and everything looked good to go. Then at the end of week 38 at the last ultrasound, Birdie had moved around some more and ended up in the transverse breach position. As such, when we went to the hospital on the Monday of week 39 M was actually on the schedule for c-section in early afternoon. Naturally, at the "just in case" ultrasound before surgery, Birdie was back in heads down position and so natural birth was back on the table.
Monday afternoon and evening was therefore devoted to manual methods of inducement, namely a balloon catheter. This was extremely uncomfortable for M, and worse, didn't actually seem to do anything useful with regards to hastening our daughter's arrival. It did cause M some pretty substantial pain. After most of a day of this the the ob/gyn on duty evaluated her that evening and said "ok, it's clear that this kid isn't going to come the natural way, you should get some sleep and we'll do a c-section Tuesday morning." In line with those plans, all the manual inducement efforts were halted and we went to bed. That concluded our first day in the birthing suite.
As I mentioned in the corresponding You Are What You Eat post, due to the pandemic, the entire birthing unit was locked down. We were not allowed to leave the room for any reason. At that point the hospital staff was just starting to get vaccinated, so we had on masks basically the entire time. It was extremely boring for both of us, although obviously worse for M since she had to deal with pain and discomfort in addition to the boredom.
The birthing suite itself wasn't too bad. At the time I joked that it was the most expensive hotel I'd ever stayed in, which alas did not correspond with it being the nicest. There was one very large room with M's hospital bed next to various monitoring equipment. There was a large sofa bed, an armchair, and a recliner on wheels that could be moved around. A pretty sizable TV was mounted over the sofa bed. A small hallway was partitioned off by a curtain, which hid a sink and the doorway to a very small utilitarian bathroom, which included a shower. There some south-facing windows which looked down on a courtyard of some kind, and mostly showed us gray clouds the entire time we were there. The wifi was pretty strong. There are worse places to be confined, but it appears that I am temperamentally not suited to being locked up, and clearly should avoid prison for that reason alone.